Internet Hoaxes
Advance fee fraud
I know many of you as have I have received or will receive email stating that the person is willing to transfer some big amount of money to you for safekeeping and you will get a share for doing this. This is common coming from Nigeria but also from other African countries and it is a fraud. The perpetrators of this are seeking an advance fee in conjunction with transfer of funds that never exists in the first place. These people pray on everyone's dream of obtaining wealth the easy way, greed and just plain ignorance.
Fake Lotto winning
Many people have caught on to this fraud and so the morphed into UK and other European countries Lotto as the mail states you have won. They even pray upon churches and Charitable Organizations now.
Counterfeit Check Processing
Another common fraud is employment to act as agent of cashing checks in your country some even coming from China. These are gangs or criminal organizations laundering counterfeit checks. Often a bank will honor a check and pay out before known to be counterfeit. This leaves the victim responsible for paying the money back to the bank. The best way to protect yourself is never send, cash or spend money from a check that has not cleared the bank.
Bible Hoax
There is a new one they have come up with a person will write asking for donation of Bibles for a ministry in their country. What happens is they will take the bibles and sell them for a small price undercutting the market. Never used for a ministry.
Dating, girlfriend and mail order bride hoaxes
Often criminals will take pictures of a beautiful women and contact single men looking for a relationship. They scope out dating sites, profiles and IM pages for their victims. These criminals will often sweet take victims into sending money for visas, family problems or other hard luck stories and a lot of these based in Russia or former Soviet block countries but also some from Africa as well. Be skeptical of supposed internet girl friends fast at falling in love because the criminals want to work fast at getting to their deeds to waste no time or effort.
Conclusion
The internet is a great place to find good information, make friends keep in touch with others, and do business. There always are other sides as long as there is a criminal element. Please be careful, learn, and watchful as said before “If it is too good to be true most often it is”.
Please feel free to link this to email and forward to friends. Not saying that a miracle will happen or you punished for not forwarding but just to protect others from falling for some bad things happening around the globe.
